]]>I’m so excited to announce the launch of my new podcast, Humans Who Make Games, in partnership with IGN and Starburns Audio.

Humans Who Make Games is an intimate longform interview podcast where I sit down with the creators and artists behind your favorite video games.

As a life-long lover of games, I’ve always felt that it’s so strange that the people who make them are so often invisible. You can find millions of hours of breakdowns of games’ plots, mechanics, or history on the Internet, but it’s strikingly rare that you have the chance to get to know the people behind the keyboard who created the dang game to begin with. That’s what this show attempts to rectify.

For our first season, I talk with Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy, Binding of Isaac), Derek Yu (Spelunky), Christine Love (Analogue: A Hate Story, Ladykiller in a Bind), Justin Ma (FTL, Into the Breach), and many more about what their first memory of games was, how they got into the industry, and what brought them to create the games they did.

]]>The Model Minority Mythhttps://www.adamconover.net/the-model-minority-myth/
Thu, 17 Jan 2019 06:11:20 +0000https://www.adamconover.net/?p=565Here’s a segment from our newest episode, Adam Ruins A Sitcom, in which we discuss the real history behind the “model minority” myth that is so often placed

]]>Here’s a segment from our newest episode, Adam Ruins A Sitcom, in which we discuss the real history behind the “model minority” myth that is so often placed on Asian-Americans:

Here are my responses to two common questions about this video that I’ve received on Twitter. First, in response to the question of whether or not Germans were interned in camps during World War II:

Here’s some fuller context. None of this excuses or diminishes the unjust internment of those German nationals. But the fact is that the US government had a sweeping race-based policy of interning nearly ALL people of Japanese descent, which it did not for Germans and Italians. pic.twitter.com/0VrQpFyb6c

Secondly, in response to our decision to call the camps that Japanese-Americans were held in “concentration camps” rather than internment camps:

To those in comments of our recent video arguing that the camps Japanese-Americans were interned in should not be referred to as “concentration camps”: that’s what the US government called them, so that’s we call them. Scholars agree. https://t.co/TV4cwtbqXcpic.twitter.com/jh90DSLPHo

While it’s certainly possible to have a good-faith disagreement on which term is more apropos, it is clear that “concentration camp” is an acceptable choice, and we chose to side with scholars that believe that its use is the most accurate way to highlight the deep human rights abuse that the camps represented.

]]>A viewer of our show named David Miller sent me this message (somewhat condensed):

I just found your show on Netflix, and I loved it until I got to the episode on drugs. Specifically, the section on OxyContin. It really, really pissed me off. While I agree that we need to find better and safer alternatives, this drug has been heavily misrepresented.

In the real world, people with chronic pain problems (like me, and my parents) require it just to be able to function. I’m unable to work, cook, or even shower due to the extreme pain I’m in 24 hours a day. Without OxyContin I’m plagued by chronic fatigue because it takes so much energy just to be alive.

Taken appropriately, it’s basically impossible to become addicted.

Lawmakers would have us believe that prescription opiates are a gateway to abuse and heroin. The reality is that heroin addicts only seek (or buy) prescription opiates when they’re unable to get heroin. Why would they? Heroin is fifty times stronger than OxyContin and actually SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than it too.

I’d like to thank David for his message. When we did our 2016 segment on how pharmaceutical companies created the opioid crisis, the narrative that unscrupulous doctors who got patients hooked on their drugs was widely reported. In the time since, it’s become clear that this narrative was not entirely correct.

While Big Pharma is absolutely culpable for causing the crisis, the blame put on doctors and patients has resulted in many people with chronic pain being unable to fill their prescriptions because of the unfair presumption that they might abuse them. A particularly good piece of journalism on this topic is The Pain Refugees, by Brian Goldstone in Harper’s; it is a harrowing account of patients who suddenly lose access to the only treatment that works for them. That is wrong, and unfair.

While I don’t think the evidence bears out David’s assertion that there is no connection between prescription opioids and addiction, I do wish that our segment had focused less on the behavior of individual doctors and patients, and kept the spotlight on the corporations that are truly to blame. Were we to do this topic again, knowing what we do today, we would have approached it a bit differently.

]]>Why You Don’t Own Your Techhttps://www.adamconover.net/why-you-dont-own-your-tech/
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 03:11:27 +0000https://www.adamconover.net/?p=541Here’s the segment from last night’s Adam Ruins Tech on how tech companies use software and restrictive licenses to make sure that you don’t really

]]>Here’s the segment from last night’s Adam Ruins Tech on how tech companies use software and restrictive licenses to make sure that you don’t really own the gadgets you buy from them.

Thanks so much to Kit Walsh, Staff Attorney at the EFF for appearing in this segment and helping us think through this issue. And I’m grateful to Andra Whipple and Mervyn Degaños for their fantastic writing and research on this episode; not to mention the inimitable Krys Marshall for bringing digital assistant Cori to life.

]]>Raphael Bob-Waksberg and I Interview Each Other for the Talkhousehttps://www.adamconover.net/raphael-bob-waksberg-and-i-interview-each-other-for-the-talkhouse/
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 02:56:49 +0000https://www.adamconover.net/?p=535It was a rare pleasure to sit down with my old friend, comedy partner, and former roommate Raphael Bob-Waksberg for the Talkhouse podcast. Raphael and I were in a comedy group

In the podcast, we talked about what it was like to work together creatively at a young age, spill the dirt on our joint living situation (including our truly bizarre system for doing the dishes), and Raphael asked me some of the best questions I’ve ever been asked about Adam Ruins Everything in an interview. We got personal! Check it out.

]]>New Adam Ruins Everything Segment – Everyone Leaves Black People Out of the Gun Debatehttps://www.adamconover.net/new-adam-ruins-everything-segment-everyone-leaves-black-people-out-of-the-gun-debate/
Tue, 04 Dec 2018 21:16:05 +0000https://www.adamconover.net/?p=526Adam Ruins Everything is back with all new episodes airing every Tuesday night at 10pm on TruTV! And you know what that means — new full segments of the show are going up on

I’m incredibly proud of this segment, and am enormously grateful to Rasheda Crockett, Sam Roudman, head writer Alison Zeidman, head of research Natalie Shure, and the rest of our creative team for doing such amazing work with one of the most difficult topics we’ve ever done. Not to mention the funny and heartfelt performances by Punkie Johnson, Landry Allbright, and Rick Overton, and Tim Wilkime’s fine directing. Hope you enjoy, and come back every week for more new episodes!

]]>My Interview with Larry Kinghttps://www.adamconover.net/my-interview-with-larry-king/
Tue, 04 Dec 2018 20:55:37 +0000https://www.adamconover.net/?p=527It was a great honor to appear on Larry King Now and be mercilessly grilled by the broadcasting legend himself. Larry is a great sport, and I had a blast. Check out the interview

]]>My talk at XOXOhttps://www.adamconover.net/my-talk-at-xoxo-fest/
Sun, 25 Nov 2018 01:11:34 +0000https://www.adamconover.net/?p=521My friend Andy Baio was kind enough to invite me to speak at this year’s XOXO Fest. I was completely honored to do so — XOXO is a one-of-a-kind event where some of the

In my talk, I cover a lot of ground – the dark history of Oregon, the origin story of Adam Ruins Everything, and the narrative and argumentative tricks we use on the show to try to change minds. Most importantly, though, I talk for the first time about the limits of our show’s message and method — the times that we’ve failed to convince those who most needed convincing, how that’s made me think differently about the goals of the show, and what the phrase “preaching to the choir” now means to me. That potion begins at 17:27 in the video; click this link to watch starting at that point.

]]>2018/2019 Tour: See Me LIVE in Your City!https://www.adamconover.net/2018-2019-tour-see-me-live-in-your-city/
Sun, 07 Oct 2018 02:12:16 +0000https://www.adamconover.net/?p=510This December and January I’m taking my brand new show MIND PARASITES on a 24-city tour! I’ve been working on this show for a year, and I’m incredibly excited

This December and January I’m taking my brand new show MIND PARASITES on a 24-city tour! I’ve been working on this show for a year, and I’m incredibly excited to finally take it across the country: It’s a brand new hour of never-before seen material that combines standup comedy with a psychedelic biology class, taking you on a tour of some of the weirdest organisms in nature, and revealing the cultural parasites that seek to control your mind and behavior.

Update: Sadly, these dates had to be rescheduled because of conflicts with Adam Ruins Everything’s production calendar. Stay tuned for updated tour dates for 2019!